I make no claim to being a business genius. You can make so much money in this business that it loses its value.

For years the Trio did nothing but play for musicians and other hip people. We practically starved to death.

Only time, education and plenty of good schooling will make anti-segregation work.

I make no claim to being a business genius. You can make so much money in this business that it loses its value.

I'm a musician at heart, I know I'm not really a singer. I couldn't compete with real singers. But I sing because the public buys it.

Get me well so I can get on television and tell people to stop smoking.

There's just one thing I can't figure out. My income tax!

I'm in the music business for one purpose - to make money.

People don't slip. Time catches up with them.

Critics don't buy records. They get 'em free.

The whites come to applaud a Negro performer just like the colored do. When you've got the respect of white and colored, you can ease a lot of things.

If I could read it, I could play it.

It's not the people in the South who create racial problems - it's the people who are governing.

Music is emotional, and you may catch a musician in a very unemotional mood or you may not be in the same frame of mind as the musician. So a critic will often say a musician is slipping.

I was a guinea pig for some hoodlums who thought they could hurt me and frighten me and keep other Negro entertainers from the South.

The only prejudice I've found anywhere in TV is in some advertising agencies, and there isn't so much prejudice as just fear.

The Supreme Court is having a hard time integrating schools. What chance do I have to integrate audiences?

The only sport I'm not interested in is horse racing. That's because I don't know the horses personally.

I'm an interpreter of stories. When I perform it's like sitting down at my piano and telling fairy stories.

The sheriff is at the cash register, and if I don't get a hit soon, I don't know what I'll do.

You've got to change with the public's taste.

I can't bear to see myself even in movies. The feeling is complex. I can't stand the sight of myself.

The people who know nothing about music are the ones always talking about it.

I am famous because I am an African American jazz artist.

I'm not playing for other musicians. We're trying to reach the guy who works all day and wants to spend a buck at night. We'll keep him happy.

Primarily I'm a meat man, although once in a while I toy with a few vegetables.

I often wonder whether Negroes like myself who are pretty well known help out at all in breaking down barriers.

I'm proud of our court. It knocks back a lot of the propaganda the Communists put out about the way America treats her Negroes.

I am an American citizen and feel I am entitled to the same rights as any other citizen.

I may be helping to bring harmony between people through my music.

I can remember the frustration of not being able to talk. I knew what I wanted to say, but I could not get the words out, so I would just scream.

What I try to do for my readers is to pass on some of the things that I found out about being thirteen after doing it for forty years.

In this watering-place I acted an heroic character, badly studied; and being a novice on such a stage, I forgot my part before a pair of lovely blue eyes.

Young people discovering their sexuality must know they walk with a strong tradition and that they are not alone. They have a right to information without being pressured.

Being a publicist is like management in a lot of ways - you're their friend, you're their mother, you're their confidante.

I mean, all alternative comedy is are comedians that have being doing it for so long, for so long, that they were relaxed enough to start becoming personal on stage.

I became hooked on the idea of being able to shoot an image and process it myself, and end up with a product.

Being a cover artist is not like being a real artist. That's just copying what someone else did.

It is too maddening. I've got to fly off, right now, to some devilish navy yard, three hours in a seasick steamer, and after being heartily sick, I'll have to speak three times, and then I'll be sick coming home. Still, who would not be sick for England?

I don't like being recognised, I have no interest in being famous at all, I just do what I do. If I could be like Captain Kirk and beam myself up and then beam myself down, I would!

I'm glad I'm not Brezhnev. Being the Russian leader in the Kremlin. You never know if someone's tape recording what you say.

Being a musician is what I do, but it's not what I am.

We're all like children. We may think we grow up, but to me, being grown up is death, stopping thinking, trying to find out things, going on learning.

We've had it very clear to the Bosnians that our obligation to equip and train their forces is completely conditional on the foreign forces being gone.

My parents were amazing people who had no business being together - and they knew it.

Teachers started recognizing me and praising me for being smart in science and that made me want to be even smarter in science!

Sure, I get the blues. But what I try to do, is apply joy to the blues, you know? I don't know if it's a technique, or just being bent that way, being raised by the folks I was raised by.

Kind thoughts are rarer than either kind words or deeds. They imply a great deal of thinking about others. This in itself is rare. But they also imply a great deal of thinking about others without the thoughts being criticisms. This is rarer still.

The judge turned his back towards me, sitting back on his judge's chair, while I was in the witness stand being questioned. The whole courtroom was full of these anarchists, leftists, communists and Jewish lobbyists.